Pre-Memorizing Peg Words

Okay, you are now ready to use the peg word system except for one "little" problem... you don't have any peg words yet!! So your first task is to memorize a list of peg words. There are two ways to do this. Take a look at both methods first, then decide which one you want to use (or you could even use both). The first way is so simple that a young child can take advantage of the system: we just take the numbers 0 to 10 and we associate a rhyming word with each of them, like this:

Of course, after the number 12, there aren't any easy rhymes. But there are still ways to extend the system. For example, you can "recycle" the words by imagining distorted versions of them. For 11-19, we can just use the words for 1-9, but imagine each word as burnt: so 10 would be a superhero wearing charred black clothes, so 11 would be an overly toasted bun, 12 would be a melted shoe, 13 would be a burnt tree, etc. For 20-29, we could imagine each word 0-9 as tiny. For 30-39, we could imagine each word as frozen in ice. Etc.

The more powerful method is to memorize words for all the numbers from 0 to 99 (and even 00 to 09) using the number alphabet as given in "How to Improve Your Memory". This helps you form an association without having to memorize a tedious arbitrary association with a number like rhyming also does. (Also, if you think of the peg word, you are guaranteed to get the correct number by extracting the consonants and converting them to digits.) The much larger list is more powerful because you avoid recycling, therefore your brain is less likely to get confused. However, it does take quite a bit of time to memorize. But once you memorize the peg words, you have them for life and you never need to memorize them again! Below are the peg words I chose for my 110 numbers. You don't have to use the same ones; for example, 13 could also be "Tom" (Sawyer, perhaps?), 47 could also be "rake" and 89 could also be "fob." Use whatever word is the most comfortable/memorable to you. But once you make a choice, don't ever change it!

At this point you can decide what system you want to use. If you want to try the more advanced system, you don't have to memorize all 110 right away; you can work on 0-9 to start out with. You could also choose the easy rhyming system but expand it later using the advanced system. You'd have a hybrid system because the peg words for 0-10 are associated differently from those 11-99 and 00-09, but you shouldn't have a problem knowing the difference... just make sure no peg word is used for two different numbers.